


Marmite

by doomcanary



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 08:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1338475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomcanary/pseuds/doomcanary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein the boys are revolting in a peculiarly English way, and Marmite conquers all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marmite

**Sunday**

Arthur sat back, examined Merlin narrowly, and made a decision.

“You,” he said, “are a freak.”

Merlin, rumpled and bare-chested in nothing but a pair of ancient pyjama bottoms, looked up and scowled.

“Piss off,” he said, and dug the knife into the [Marmite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmite) jar again. “It's far too bloody early for you being funny.”

“Seriously, Merlin. [Scotch pancakes](http://bakingforbritain.blogspot.com/2006/05/scotch-pancakes.html) and Marmite? You're pregnant.”

“I like them.”

“You'd like a proper cooked breakfast better.”

Merlin shrugged. “I can't be arsed making it. Are you going to make that tea or what?”

Arthur held up his hands, and got up from the table to set about making tea. It was a wonderfully soothing and orderly little ritual, even in their grotty student kitchen; the cupboard doors were wonky and there was only a fluorescent strip for a light, but the kettle made it home. The morning sun on the cracks in the worktop was almost a luxury. Arthur filled the (elderly, encrusted) kettle and put it on; got out two (stained, mismatched) mugs; dropped a (Tesco own brand) teabag into each; and started the daily quest for their (one remaining) teaspoon.

“Sniff the milk,” grunted Merlin from the table. Arthur paused, and mentally swore.

“It was all right yesterday,” he said.

Merlin, as if under great duress, turned round to look at him. He was chewing a mouthful of his obscene pancake concoction; the other half of it hovered in his hand, his fingers digging craters into the tarry ooze that coated it. Arthur tried not to wince. He loathed even the sight of the stuff. They'd had an ongoing feud about it in the first year they'd shared a flat, in halls with Lance and Morgana and Gwen; Merlin had trawled vintage clothing websites for an entire month until he'd found a “My Mate Marmite” T-shirt, and then he wore it to bed specifically so that it would annoy Arthur in the mornings.

Arthur, oppressed beneath the weight of Merlin's best “I am still five-sixths asleep and I am not going to glare this twice” look, got the milk out of the fridge and sniffed it.

“Good enough for government work,” he said. Neither of them mentioned the plastic tub full of something green and furry that had been sitting next to where the milk lived since around the time the flatwarming hangovers wore off. The kettle came to the boil, steam roiling up to condense on the peeling flakes of paint where the window leaked, and clicked off. Arthur made tea.

 

**Monday**

“Where's the fucking milk?”

“See all those little white lumpy bits in the sink?”

Arthur looked.

“Piss,” he said. Merlin handed him a Scotch pancake. Arthur handed it back.

“I'll get a pasty on my way to campus,” he said.

Merlin looked at him like he'd just grown a second head, and left the box of Coco Pops exactly where Arthur had put it, on the counter where the tea mugs ought to go. The brown curves of dried-up mug stains peeked out from underneath the bright yellow box, like unkempt pubes out of morning-after underwear.

 

**Tuesday**

Merlin was either out or still asleep, so Arthur went down to the shop, got another pint of milk and a packet of bacon, and made himself something decent. He even had enough of a Sandhurst moment to clean the mug rings off the worktop. His father would almost have been proud, if Arthur hadn't turned out to be both completely uninterested in a military career and very, very gay. He heard the sound of a key in the lock, followed by the obligatory thump that actually made the door open, and Merlin came in, dishevelled and grinning.

“Is that bacon?” he said. “I'll have some of that.”

“Got laid then, did we?” said Arthur snidely. He threw the now even more revolting dishcloth back onto the windowsill, and turned the bacon over. It wasn't that he liked his inner bitch - especially since his inner bitch was very clearly the kind of camp, passive-aggressive queen that gave men like his father (and apparently him) nightmares – but he did acknowledge that it served a certain defensive purpose.

“Don't you start,” groaned Merlin, but he stopped hovering by the grill. “Cup of tea, at least?”

“Me start?” said Arthur. “Out with Morgana again, were you?”

“I don't know why I bother,” said Merlin. Morgana had very _definite_ ideas about who was and was not suitable for her friends to date, and she was not afraid to abuse her privileges as your friend and confidant in order to make a point.

“How many times did she ring you this time?” he said. He reached into the sugar bag and unearthed the teaspoon; it was caked into a solid chunk of brown-stained sugar about an inch across.

“About six,” said Merlin. “After the third time I just left the phone on the pillow. I think she heard me come about twice.”

Arthur banged the teaspoon lollipop down on the counter, crossed the kitchen to Merlin, and kissed him hard. Merlin didn't resist, didn't try to fight off Arthur's hands as they cupped his face, but he didn't kiss back. His face when he pushed Arthur away was closed, awkward and sad.

“We live together, mate,” he said gently. “Twelve month contract, remember? That wouldn't be smart.”

But he leaned his forehead against Arthur's while Arthur took a few deep breaths and collected himself.

“Sorry,” Arthur said. “Sorry.”

“Never mind the tea,” said Merlin. “I'll make it myself.”

Arthur gave him some bacon anyway.

 

**Wednesday**

Arthur rang Lance on Tuesday night, and asked him if he had any easy friends. Lance laughed, and told Arthur to come down to the George and Dragon. Lance was never short of a groupie or two, hardly surprising given what he looked like, and most of them really were a sure thing for pretty much anyone. Years of internalising upper-middle-class homophobia really tended to shoot Arthur in the foot when it came to making relationships last, but he wasn't bad looking and he could work the posh boy act to pull. He really liked Yorkshire accents too, which helped. He'd hardly made a start on his second pint by the time he'd got the undivided attention of Danny, who was cute in a Zac Efron sort of way, and was in his first year of performing arts at Leeds Met.

He should have taken it as a bad sign that his mind kept wandering sooner, but between the beer and Danny's wandering hands he was in the New Penny before he really knew where he was, and then he was getting his cock sucked in the bog at Queens Court, and even while he was returning the favour he was thinking about how coming out at eighteen really had completely ruined his future career, and how it probably was the one single event that had led inexorably to him being where he was now. Which was living in a crappy flat in Headingley, doing a second-rate degree at a second-rate university, and hopelessly in love with someone he hadn't got a chance of being able to keep. Merlin belonged here, with his Irish relatives and his single mum and his gift for getting along with anyone; Arthur should have kept himself repressed, and gone to Cambridge where the girls didn't mind if you went to rent boys as long as the marriage looked all right. His father had gone to Oxford, like every other man in the family, but Arthur had always thought the colour of a Cambridge blues scarf would suit him more. Danny came on a choked-back moan, and Arthur spat it down the toilet, and they swapped phone numbers without any real intention of ever calling back.

He hit the vodka after that, got drunker than he should, and woke up late and aching to find the kitchenette empty and his Coco Pops still on the side. There was a text on his phone from Merlin; it said _hope u had a good night_.

 

**Thursday**

Arthur woke to a smell of something greasy and hot. Curiosity propelled him into the kitchen, where he found the extraordinary phenomenon of Merlin standing in front of the cooker.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked.

“Boxty,” said Merlin, apparently by way of a reply.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Potato cakes.” He flipped a flat, well-browned something out of the pan and onto a plate beside him; it landed with a wonderful, heavy, oily-sounding thump. “Mum says her mammy used to make them with buttermilk, but they're all right without.”

“I thought you said you couldn't be bothered with that.”

“I can't. They're for you.”

“What?”

Merlin turned round and grinned. “Try them with Marmite,” he said.

Arthur slathered them with brown sauce instead, just to wind Merlin up. He did the same thing to the haddock when they got fish and chips that night.

“Deviant,” said Merlin.

“Vegetarian,” Arthur replied.

 

**Friday**

Arthur was eating cereal when Merlin surfaced, and he carried on doing so with iron determination while Merlin rummaged in the cupboard, left it open and used a mug from the sink, put the milk in with the teabag, and turned the kettle on last. He used a table knife to get the teabag out, even though the teaspoon could be quite clearly seen peeking out from between the fish and chip plates and the curry plates from last week.

“Morning,” said Merlin, after he'd downed about half of his still-scorching tea.

“Lance wants to know if we're coming out tonight,” said Arthur.

“Where?”

“Blayds for happy hour, then probably the Viaduct.”

Merlin wrapped his hands around his mug. “I don't know whether I feel like it,” he said.

“Come on, it's Friday,” said Arthur, more by habit than anything else.

“Yeah, but – why?” said Merlin. “Why bother going out, getting pissed, wasting money, waking up feeling shit? Milk's on at the cinema, why don't we go and see that instead?”

“Right, because watching a gay activist get shot is exactly what I need,” said Arthur.

“Saw five, then? It's on late. ”

“No way. Isn't there anything funny and shit?”

“Probably.”

Arthur checked in the computer lab after his ten o'clock lecture, and instantly texted Merlin with “ _WE ARE GOING TO SEE HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3_ ”.

 _only if u buy me nachos with ALL the cheese_ , Merlin sent back.

Arthur texted Lance and told him they were going to the cinema instead. The reply came back almost instantly: _Married_.

 

**Saturday**

“You're right. No hangover is great.”

It was ten past one, and Arthur was sprawled on the sofa in his dressing gown, tea mug already empty and Xbox controller in his hand. Merlin opened the fridge, then the food cupboard, and said “We need to go shopping.”

“Bollocks,” said Arthur. “Does that mean I have to get dressed?”

 

**Sunday**

“We should have done this a lot sooner.”

“Definitely,” Merlin said, sounding utterly sated.

“I never knew vegetarian sausages actually tasted good.”

“I like the way you've learned that bacon's a vegetable, too.”

“Deviant,” grinned Arthur.

“Practical,” Merlin replied. “No sense in making yourself miserable.”

“Scotch pancakes and Marmite, vegetable pigs -” Arthur was about to go on, but Merlin gave him a wide-eyed look and said “Oh god, Marmite!” in a voice Arthur would have more expected to hear while naked. Merlin practically levitated out of his chair, and Arthur had never seen bread get from the packet to the toaster so fast.

“There is one good thing about the fact you won't shag me,” he said as Merlin hovered over the toaster, apparently willing the slices to brown. He didn't seem to be aware he was fighting with the lid of the Marmite jar at the same time.

“What's that?” Merlin answered absently. The lid came loose.

“At least I know I'll never have a Marmite-flavoured dick.”

Merlin put the jar down, turned, leaned his back against the counter and folded his arms.

“You know what?" he said. "It's not the flat that's stopping me."

"What?" said Arthur, for the second time that week.

"I like you, a lot. But you're a whiny prick, except when you decide to be funny, and then you're a twat. I'm waiting for you to sort yourself out, you thick bastard, and I'm not going to wait forever.”

Arthur stared at him. In the long silence that followed, the smell of Marmite began to ooze across the room.

“I see,” said Arthur. The toaster popped.

 

**Eleven months later: Third year**

“No bloody way.”

“I'm not asking you to buy the bloody house, Arthur, we just need a table!”

“I am _not_ going to Ikea.”

“Why not?”

“Because it's gay!"

"By which you mean married, and grow the fuck up, will you?"

"All right then, it's married. By which I mean boring. _And_ grown up."

"And?" prompts Merlin, who knows him way too well.

Arthur scowls. "And I hate flatpack. Just looking at the instruction sheet makes me feel inadequate on behalf of my entire social class.”

“What are we going to eat off if we don't have a table?” says Merlin.

“See, if we'd rented a decent place that actually came with a table the way _I_ suggested, this wouldn't be a problem.” Arthur's on much better terms with his inner bitch these days - not that that gets him into any less trouble.

“If I could afford that kind of rent, I wouldn't be putting up with you.”

Merlin smiles as he says it, and Arthur knows he's lost the argument when he takes one look and melts. He pulls Merlin in for a kiss.

“My cock really does smell of Marmite when you ambush me,” he says woefully.

“You'll have a fetish before the year is out.”

“It's worse than that,” says Arthur. “I think I'm starting to like the stuff.”

**Author's Note:**

> OK, two things. First, the glorious British institution that is [Marmite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmite) has its own [website](http://www.marmite.com/), and yes, it really is [as bad as you think it is](http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/images/marmite.jpg) ;) (pic from Google Images). Second... I really have no idea what's up with me at the moment. I seem to have been swallowed whole by some sort of coming-out-angst monster, except as per usual I can't get away from my inner comedian. If I get much moodier I'll end up writing the sequel to Conquest, and then you'll _all_ be ~~horny~~ sorry.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy.


End file.
